


we’re the heirs to this glimmering world

by cashewdani



Category: Homeland
Genre: Abortion, Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe, Angst, F/M, Teen Pregnancy, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-19
Updated: 2013-01-19
Packaged: 2017-11-26 02:14:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/645431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cashewdani/pseuds/cashewdani
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And she doesn’t think she meant to sleep with him while their parents are at a fundraiser, and her brother’s in the next room playing video games, and she can hear the Secret Service men shifting their weight outside the door, but it’s still more perfect than lots of other places she’s been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we’re the heirs to this glimmering world

**Author's Note:**

  * For [perfectlystill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfectlystill/gifts).



> This exists because perfectlystill and I had a weird conversation on Twitter. Also, because I could just not with that ridiculous hit and run plot when clearly, accidental teen pregnancy would have accomplished the same drama and angst, but also allowed us more makeouts.

Dana loses her virginity after two joints, half of someone else’s beer and a text from her mother expressing how she was grounded for breaking curfew.

In the backseat of some car she’s never been inside before, Dana looks at the stars as Xander uncomfortably moves inside of her, tells her she’s pretty and he loves her until he finishes, and then there’s just quiet.

She expected to feel differently, after, feel something, but maybe that’s the drugs or the fact that since her father came back from the dead nothing really feels real anyway.

They go back to the party and Xander keeps his hand on the small of her back and she doesn’t know if it’s a possessive thing, or something tells him she’s bound to just float away, insubstantial, otherwise.

At home, hours later, after the screaming match and the punishments and the way her mother had grabbed her chin so that Dana would look at her while she was being spoken to, she studies her ruined underwear in the soft glow of the bathroom nightlight.

She cries for all the Danas she could have been: the one whose dad never went away, the one who could have been better even though he had, but mostly for the one who keeps thinking anything she does is going to cause a change.

\---

They asked her how she would feel about her father running for Congress but kind of in that way where it really didn’t matter all that much what she or Chris said. Not that Chris would ever do something like disagree.

And she debates making a fuss about it, and talking about how every choice they make is just one more thing that’s going to chip away at her life as she knows it, maybe even flipping the table over, but she just sighs, and asks to be excused, and lets that speak for itself.

Her dad comes in later and tries to touch her shoulder and tell her how he knows this is a big sacrifice she’s making but how they’re a family and sometimes for your family you have to do things you don’t want to do, like that’s something she is not extremely familiar with.

She’s quiet long enough that then it’s his turn to sigh and he leaves her alone to worry about if she’s ever going to get to be normal again. If Dana Brody is going to get to be anything other than a weirdo along for the ride.

\---

They tell her she’s going to a new school, and of course she is, it was the only thing left untouched by her prodigal father’s return.

Her mother can’t stop talking about what a great opportunity this is for her, how wonderful it would be to expand her social circle, while she’s forced into trying on matronly navy skirts and button down tops.

Staring at herself in the full length store mirror, she says, “Maybe I’ll cut my hair, like a nice, soccer mom bob to go with this uniform,” wondering why her knees need to be covered in the fucking 21st century.

Reaching out to adjust the long blond hair away from her face, her mother asks, “Like mine?” but Dana pulls away.

“Yeah, you’re right, maybe I should let it grow.” She feels the grip loosen, the hair falling back against her shoulder, and watches as her mother looks away from their reflections.

\---

The first words that Finn speaks to her are, “He was just talking,” but she doesn’t know at the time that he’d been trying to pick those words for awhile now. She’ll find out while they’re both supposed to be working on European History in his parents’ library, their books open but mostly ignored.

“I can’t believe you were scared to talk to me.”

Finn leans back in his chair, with his hands behind his head, elbows bent into v’s. “I don’t know if you know this, but you kind of have a reputation as a bitch.”

She rolls her eyes. “How could I possibly have already had a reputation when I was just starting out at school?”

“Can you not hear the way you just asked that question?” He smirks at her, tipping the chair back even farther. “Like, seriously, Dana, the way you said, “Here” during attendance on day one was just dripping with bitchiness.”

“Bitchiness doesn’t drip, Phineas,” she says, and he laughs.

“No?”

“No. Bitchiness smothers. Maybe scalds. But never drips.”

“For someone who isn’t a bitch, you’ve certainly researched the topic heavily.”

She can’t not grin by this point. “Oh fuck you,” and he laughs again.

The chair’s front two legs thud to the floor as he leans forward, putting his weight on his forearms against the imported table. “I think you might want to, Dana Brody.”

She looks at his quirked up eyebrow and undone tie and the impish suggestion that seems to be all over his mouth.

“Wouldn’t you like to know for sure,” she challenges, clicking her pen, turning the page in her textbook to the Napoleonic Wars. She can feel him watching her, the only sound in the room the hum of his laptop’s fan.

Dana smiles with Finn. She laughs, sometimes, when he says something funny, instead of just stating that it was. She tries to remember the last time Xander made her even giggle without the aid of cannabis.

While writing down a date in the margins of her handout, he tells her, “I would. And just to clarify what I mean by that, it’s both enjoying the confirmation and fucking you.”

When she looks up, he’s running his index finger under a line of text, and it’s almost like it didn’t happen except for how she imagines that touch along her skin, and blushes, which she hasn’t done in ages.

\---

Kissing Finn at the top of the Washington Monument is surreal to her not because of who he is, or where they are, but because of the way for just a moment all she’s thinking about is how she’s kissing a boy she likes. It’s peaceful, picturing the reflection of their silhouettes in the windows, even as her pulse picks up.

And she doesn’t want to go as far as to say that Finn has made her a better person, but even though all she wants to do is keep kissing him, feeling the lips that she’s watched chew on pen caps and erasers and his nails for weeks now, she eventually remembers Xander and how he’s her boyfriend, and how maybe she doesn’t want everything in her life to be as fucked up as it has been.

“There’s still a whole big world out there,” she says, while they’re on their way down, holding hands even though they shouldn’t, and he squeezes her fingers and somehow she feels it everywhere.

\---

Breaking up with Xander takes three hours and he cries and it makes her a little sick to realize she’s already gone and doesn’t so much care.

\---

The next time she sees Finn it’s in the hallway at school outside the chapel. He asks her, “It’s over?” and she nods, biting her lip against the smile that’s threatening to burst out and blow her whole mystique.

He picks her up and swings her around, feet off the ground and everything, and while she shrieks, she feels like any other girl. She feels happy.

“I’m taking you out tonight,” he tells her, and there it is again, the sense of normalcy.

During study hall, she tries to call her dad from the girl’s bathroom, to tell him maybe his getting into politics plan wasn’t the worst thing ever, but it goes to voicemail and by then she realizes how ridiculous something like that might actually sound out loud, so she just keeps it to herself.

\---

They joyride to lose the Secret Service in his brand new car that smells like it just came off the lot, but the speed and the heady way the night is making her feel overall, makes her slow him down pretty quickly once they lose their tail. She’s had enough rushing past everything.

He puts his hand on her thigh, his fingers slender but solid and it’s almost like she’s hyperventilating, but in a good way. Like the air’s too thin, but she doesn’t even give a fuck.

She rolls her window down, far, even though it’s not so warm and she has to talk more loudly to be heard. “I want to make out with you at all the monuments,” she shares with him and the streets of their nation’s capital.

“All of them?” he asks, and yeah, that might not be the best idea she’s ever had.

“Well, like, maybe not the ones that are purely for remembering people who have died, but the other ones.”

“That can probably be arranged,” he tells her, switching on his turn signal. “What about in one of the airplanes at the Smithsonian?”

“Oh definitely. And on stage at the Kennedy Center,” she says, anticipation rising within her.

He informs her, thoughtfully, “I’d really like to get it on at the Mint.”

She clarifies, “While a tour’s coming through,” a little breathlessly.

“Obviously.”

She wonders where he’s taking her and which of these places she’s actually going to be able to remember the taste of his mouth from.

\---

On their first date, he kisses her in a parking garage, fingers tangled in her hair, and she holds his face as he presses her more closely against the car door.

She moans when he moves to suck her neck, the sound echoing off all the concrete, and it makes him inhale, sharply, as her knees shake and her blood rushes.

She’ll never forget the place, spot 17, even though it doesn’t appear in any guidebooks.

“That was our own monument,” she tells him later, outside her house, “a monument to teenaged inappropriateness” and they can’t stop laughing even though her mom is clearly watching them from the living room window.

\---

She winds up going home with him after school nearly every day, since he’s on indefinite house arrest after losing the black Suburban full of people who are supposed to keep him alive.

They work on assignments in between making out on antique furniture and sometimes he’ll hold her hand in the hallways like he’s not even thinking about doing it.

\---

Having sex with Xander just kind of happened each and every time. They’d be hanging out and suddenly her underwear would be gone, or his dick would be right out there in the open, and she doesn’t remember ever really even talking about it.

But Finn wants to have discussions. Like, honest, full-on discussions where he asks her if she’s sure and she’s ready, because she doesn’t have to do anything she doesn’t want to, he just wants her to know that.

It almost makes her cry one day because she realizes this is what it’s supposed to be like. You’re not just supposed to blow a guy because you’re out of weed and there’s nothing on TV and your mom is being a bitch about you emptying the dishwasher.

And she doesn’t think she meant to sleep with him while their parents are at a fundraiser, and her brother’s in the next room playing video games, and she can hear the Secret Service men shifting their weight outside the door, but it’s still more perfect than lots of other places she’s been. 

There’s a bed, for one.

And there’s Finn. Who takes the time to look at her while he’s unzipping her sweatshirt and doesn’t smell like all of her vices.

He delicately touches her wrists and her hipbones and Dana feels special having sex with him. She feels like the way she imagines girls are supposed to feel during sex, like all those stories and songs she’d convinced herself were purely bullshit like so much else. She doesn’t come, but she doesn’t really mind. It’s still better than she ever felt with Xander.

Afterwards, Finn says, “So, that was pretty great, wouldn’t mind doing that again,” and a laugh bubbles out of her that feels like it’s just been waiting somewhere inside for much too long.

\---

Considering how concerned both sets of their parents are about image and reputation and all that, they do leave them alone a fucking lot.

Finn learns to get her off writing words in Latin with his tongue and she becomes so familiar with the way his eyelashes look against his cheeks as he comes that she can picture it even when she’s alone.

Their families are going to be in the White House and she’s going to turn 18 and she should have known things were going too well. She really fucking should have.

\---

She gets dizzy at a Daughters of the American Revolution tea that her mother forces her to go to. And the color must actually completely drain from her face because there’s suddenly a whole bunch of middle aged ladies in pastel suits waving programs in front of her and asking if she’s got her monthly friend.

She doesn’t.

It isn’t until she’s had a glass of orange juice that makes her stomach burn, that she is finally allowed to go lay down in the car and rest for awhile.

Dana’s pretty sure before she checks the calendar on her phone, but yeah. It’s not great.

\---

The first thing Finn tells her is that it’s going to be okay, and she wants to believe him. He even offers to go with her to a doctor’s office before they both realize how that would look. How many people would know about it.

She’s terrified even to go and buy a test.

It’s not like paparazzi are following her around everywhere but maybe they are. Maybe they will be, and her parents will see it on the news that she went to a Planned Parenthood, or they’ll find an EPT in the trash before it gets picked up.

Like possibly being pregnant in high school isn’t terrible enough.

But, eventually she can’t take it any more and cuts school while Finn is taking his AP exam she helped him study for back when that seemed like the most important test to pray about.

She signs in as Sally H at the admin desk, and less than an hour later a P.A. with a sad expression tells her she’s just a few weeks along. This girl, who she’s not even sure if she’s supposed to call Doctor, offers to stay and answer any questions Dana might have, like that’s going to be possible.

She wants to ask, “What do you think my parents are going to say,” anyway, but settles for, “What the fuck am I going to do?”

Dana listens half-heartedly about abortions and pre-natal care and adoption as she stares at the hand on her knee that’s supposed to be comforting.

\---

She had planned on telling Finn in a better way than she did, in between classes in the hallway, but to be fair, she’d only gotten as far as think of something less terrible than at school.

But he was there, at his locker, and it was the strangest thing, but seeing him, she felt more alone with the whole situation than she had since a week before for a second.

“I went to a place and they did a test...” she starts, and he interrupts with, “Yeah, and it was negative, right? I told you, it was going to be fine.”

She tells him, “I’m pregnant, Finn,” and the look on his face, that’s the worst part of this. The worst part so far.

“Fuck, Dana, seriously, FUCK! I thought you were on the pill!”

“I am!” she says, defensive. 

“What are we going to do?”

He’s so angry, and she just wants to cry about everything, but she feels too panicked and weak to give into it. “I don’t know.”

“I would rather die than have my father find out about this,” he says, almost cruel, and she knows what he’s saying.

“How do you think I feel?” she spits out, and he softens, just a little bit, she can tell, but he doesn’t make any move to touch her.

“We’ll talk later. I’ve got to...I have to go.”

She watches him walk away, a tightness in his shoulders that wasn’t there before.

\---

She goes home and googles abortions until it makes her sick, even without jumping ship for the images tab. Finally deletes her search history and lies in bed never wanting to get up again.

Dana wishes she had friends and that her world wasn’t so small and that she could have just had something nice, for once, something that didn’t have to be too good to be true.

\---

Finn starts avoiding her at school, or when he can’t physically avoid her, the topic of their ever growing child is definitely off limits.

She isn’t sure why he thinks ignoring something like this is going to make it go away, but she doesn’t really blame him.

In Euro one day, she puts her head down because there’s this dull ache behind her eyes. She didn’t plan to fall asleep while their teacher droned on about the rise of communism, but the room is warm, and she’s just so tired. She wakes up right before the bell to Finn’s hand on her back, his voice calling her name.

As soon as her eyes are open though, he’s gone, headed towards the door, and she spends all of Trig thinking about how for a second, she felt like she used to feel before she realized where she was.

\---

She argues with him at the fundraiser because she’s hormonal and angry and because he should have to suffer with her. He shouldn’t just get to sit next to her in the limo and look away when she tells him, “If you’re not going to do this with me, I’m going to have to do this by myself.” Shouldn’t be the only one who can sneak unattended drinks off the tables.

“You need to talk to me about it! You promised. We have to figure this out!”

“What do you want me to say, Dana?” he says, trying to keep his voice down and drag her away from the rest of the guests.

“Say anything! Tell me what you’re feeling, because, fuck, Finn, all I want to do is tell you what I’m going through.”

“Not here.”

“When then, huh? When?”

“You’re getting hysterical.” And she is, she can feel the crazed energy rising up from within her.

“This is my life, Finn! These are our lives and you’ve got to stop pretending like this isn’t happening.”

“What’s not happening?” his mother asks, and Dana knows from the expression on his face that he was too distracted also to notice her approaching.

And then her mother’s there too, asking them what’s wrong, and Dana knows she’s going to break her heart, but she spits out, “Finn knocked me up,” because what’s one more disappointment.

The conversation quickly turns from accusations of irresponsibility and secrecy to the campaign, and Dana knew someone was going to tell her to terminate, but it still stings all the way through her when Mrs. Walden suggests it.

Finn just sits as far apart from her as he possibly can on the bench at the end of the bed and lets his mother say it, like it’s a finality.

She regrets everything with him a little bit more.

\---

She’s shocked when her father is the one to hug her. When he offers to take her to an adoption agency, right there from the fundraiser, because if it’s important for her to make this choice, they’re going to start taking care of that right now.

She feels...safe, driving there in the car with him, like she’s five again and he’s going to make everything okay.

But then Carrie’s standing in front of The Barker Foundation and telling them they can’t go in, and Dana has to face yet again that she’s not five anymore and her dad hasn’t been there in a fucking long time.

\---

She asks Mike to take her to see this girl Inez after she spends the night there. Inez got pregnant last year and her parents had her transfer to a Catholic school after and Dana doesn’t know why but she really needs to talk to her.

When she rings the bell, a child inside starts to cry, quickly followed by someone shouting, “I don’t know why you always want to talk to me about getting fucking saved right when my kid finally goes down for a nap, but it’s not helping your case at all!”

And then Inez is standing there on the other side of the glass door, looking grayer than Dana remembered her.

“Hi,” Dana says, weakly. “I’m Dana Brody, from school? Remember me? We took Biology together.”

“What the fuck do you want?”

“Um, well, I just wanted to talk.” This is seeming stupider by the second. The baby’s still wailing.

“After all this time you want to come and talk? Like we’re girlfriends or something?”

“Can I come in?”

Inez rolls her eyes, but opens the door and steps aside. “They doing some kind of losers outreach thing? Want to scare some kids straight?”

“I’m pregnant,” Dana says, standing in this girl’s living room she was last in to build a model of a plant cell.

Inez just laughs an angry laugh. “Well, hate to break it to you, but I’m not going to be some story of inspiration.”

“I just thought...”

“No,” Inez cuts her off. “You didn’t think. The same way I didn’t think. You met some guy and he was nice to you, or maybe he wasn’t, I don’t fucking know, but he was there and you fucked and the universe decided you’re the lucky one, you’re a statistic, you’re a cautionary tale. I’m going to tell you something that I wish someone had told me, okay, Dana Brody? Since I guess that’s why you’re here. Get some wisdom from the dummy that came before. Get rid of it. Forget about what the Bible says, and those people outside with the signs, just go, and get it taken care of. Because your life is never going to be the fucking same.”

Dana stands there, shaking, the screaming toddler in the other room agitating her just as much as Inez’s words.

“Now, I’ve got a kid to go take care of. Because no one warned me.”

Mike asks her when she gets back in the car if she’s okay and she just asks him to drive, to take her home and get her out of here and she’s so thankful he doesn’t ask her any questions.

\---

She cries to her mother about feeling like a murderer. She gets told everything is going to be okay like that’s even a possibility.

\---

Dana’s pretty sure the morning that Mike comes to take them to the safehouse that she was going to go get an ultrasound and pre-natal vitamins and work at making a really good baby for some nice couple out there that wants kids of their own.

But then she’s under house arrest and it’s too much down time to think about Inez and how her life is part of all the lives her family is living too, and by the time that Finn starts texting her his apologies and pleas to talk things out, she’s back to being unsure.

She finally agrees to meet with him, even though she knows it’s going to force this decision. Whatever she tells him she’s going to do when he shows up she’s sure she’ll stick with, and it’s too much pressure for one conversation between two high school kids who haven’t even known each other for a year.

Dana goes up to the roof because maybe she’ll be able to breathe up there. The metal chairs are cold but she sits on one anyway and stares at the gray sky until he arrives.

He tells her how every morning he wakes up and there’s that few seconds of freedom and she knows exactly what he means. Feels the wham of realization he verbalizes onomatopoeia. Because she has it too, just like that day in history class, that little respite that makes everything a little worse once it passes. He looks so small and serious and nothing like the Finn she knew before this and she wants to reach out to him so badly when he tells her she’s the only one he can talk to, but touching is what got them here. And it’s not like he reaches for her either.

“I’m going to get the abortion. For me,” she clarifies. “Not for the campaign, or your parents, or anything. I’m going to do it because I think it would be best.” Her eyes burn as she tries to stare at the water and not blink, keep control of herself.

She hears him inhale, shakily, and let it out the same way. “Okay. I’ll go with you, if you want.”

“Thanks, but I don’t think I do,” because she can’t look at him now, she has no idea how she’d look at him then.

They sit out on the lawn chairs by the pool like it’s summer. Like they’re kids who can have fun.

“Remember when we were going to go to Monticello?” he asks, after what feels like a really long time.

She doesn’t mean to start sobbing, but she does, and he just keeps saying he’s sorry, over and over, while Dana remembers it all.

\---

His father dies while they’re there on the roof and she doesn’t know how to send him a text message about how fucked up she feels about it.

It seems like some weird sign from the universe, like her talking about killing his child actually killed his father, even though that’s insane. Even though the world doesn’t work that way.

She makes her mother take her to the preliminary appointment. She’s not backing down. She decided, for herself, and the death of Vice President Walden doesn’t change that.

The obstetrician gives her a follow-up date, which she texts to Finn before she can stop herself. Like he just needs to know. And when he texts her back, “Is this the kind of thing I send you flowers for?” it’s so easy to understand why she liked him so much in the beginning.

Two days later, he’s dead too and Dana wishes he had never stood up for in meeting, that he wasn’t that sweet kind of mean that made her heart speed up, that she’d never met him at all, because he’s destroyed her.

Her father’s a terrorist who killed her sort of boyfriend and hundreds of other people and Dana can’t get out of bed for her appointment.

She hates the Dana who wanted things to change. She hates the Dana who is praying she just miscarries here, from grief and burden and stress. She hates the Dana who wants to have this baby and name it Walden.

She hates all the Danas she is because they’re all toxic in some way. They all ruin everything eventually.

She just lies in bed and hates and she doesn’t even get those little moments of peace any more but that feels right, terrible as it is.


End file.
